


we know it's never simple, never easy.

by secretlyhuman



Series: breathe [1]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Angst, Break Up, F/M, Not Canon Compliant, Undercover, also a tiny bit of gina & charles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-14
Packaged: 2018-12-02 06:10:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11503377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secretlyhuman/pseuds/secretlyhuman
Summary: Jake can’t breathe. She’s turning and she’s leaving and he must have misheard her and goddamnit why can’t he just breathe.





	we know it's never simple, never easy.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Breathe by Taylor Swift and that song basically inspired this whole thing. Also I wrote this in the middle of the night and haven't proof read it so like it might be a) terrible and/or b) riddled with errors so I'm sorry if it is. 
> 
> This would kind of be set about a year after season 4 but without any of the stuff with Melanie Hawkins so Amy and Jake would have been together for three (ish) years and she's been promoted to seargent. 
> 
> Thanks for reading x

Jake can’t breathe. She’s turning and she’s leaving and he must have misheard her and goddamnit why can’t he just breathe. It feels like someone replaced his ribs so now his lungs don’t fit and this can’t be happening, she can’t actually leave. 

Except.

They fought yesterday. It was nothing, at least he thought it was nothing. They were both just proud and stupid and tired. When she started crying it had felt like someone was stepping on his heart. Her eyes had shone with tears so he apologised and it had all been okay. It had to be okay. They’d laid on his sofa with her head on his heart and cried into each other wondering when the honeymoon phase ended but it had been okay (mostly). Or at least he’d thought it had been okay except clearly it hadn’t because Amy Santiago had just broken up with him. He’d told himself this wouldn’t happen, that she was different. She wouldn’t leave him but he watched her go and at some point he started crying and how did it hurt this bad. 

(He doesn’t know but she’s sat by his door crying. She feels like someone’s pulling her apart but she had to do it.) 

…

The next day Jake feels hollow, the squad notices but don’t say a word and all he can think about is the empty space across his desk. She isn’t in and he blindly wonders if it’s because of him. The air in the room feels like it’s suffocating him, he still can’t breathe, he might not ever again. Maybe when she left she took all the air with her. He doesn’t understand how the rest of the squad can breathe, how they don’t understand that the world is ending.  
“Jake, the Captain wants you.” He flinches when Gina calls for him, but he’s not surprised. Yesterday was the worst day ever so he’s probably going to get fired just to add gas to the fire that’s left of his life.  
“Peralta, I have to inform you that Sgt. Santiago has been placed undercover. Please don’t tell the squad, this is highly classified.” He doesn’t care where she is he just doesn’t want near him, the absence of her is better than her being close but out of his reach.  
“Sir, I don’t care. Santiago can do whatever the hell she wants to, please don’t bring me into it.” Confusion flashes across the captain’s face but Jake is too tired to register it so he leaves before Holt can say anything else. Talking about her makes him want to cry and he hasn’t cried yet, he’s not sure if he starts crying he’ll ever be able to stop. 

He finishes the paperwork for three of their cases (although, he thinks, she’s left so they’re mine now), does the paperwork more precisely than he ever has. He makes bargain after bargain with himself, if he does everything right maybe she’ll come back and his world will stop imploding. It’s all crashing inwards on top of him and he doesn’t know what to do. Normally she’d fix it but she’s gone and this is her mess as much as his and he still can’t breathe. 

He thinks to himself did she know abou the assignment when she left or did she take it to get away from him. He doesn’t know what the assignment is, what if she dies and never comes back and he never gets to see her smile again. Her last impression of him so angry and twisted. He was crying on the floor, in big gasping sobs and she tried to help him up so he’d screamed at her to leave. She didn’t get to end it then be nice, she couldn’t just be his friend, he loved her (so much). He keeps thinking about her dead in an alley, raven hair knotted on the floor, blood staining one of her ridiculous, uncomfortable shirts and he didn’t think this could get any worse but somehow it has. Jake still can’t breathe (and he doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to again). 

Terry’s the one that finds him in the evidence locker, his hands clenched around the paperwork for the last case the worked together. It was their last case together and he didn’t know it and he didn’t make the most of it. Today the world is different and worse and he doesn’t know what to do. So Terry finds him on the floor and Jake tells him everything and that’s when the tears come. His shoulders are shaking and he can’t see through them and he can feel Terry pulling him closer. He’s crying because she’s gone and in danger and by telling someone it made it all a little too real. He thinks they’re on the floor for hours and he cries until he can’t and then he’s at home.

Someone must have taken him home. (Is it really home anymore?)

Rosa’s sat by him holding a beer out and he takes it. They’re on the couch but it doesn’t feel normal anymore. This isn’t his home, it’s hers and she’s everywhere in it. The couch has one of stupid grandma blankets and there’s a photo of the squad on the coffee table and a shelf full of books he hasn’t read. He can’t do it, he can’t just sit in her house ad suddenly he’s crying again and he can feel Rosa stiffen next to him unsure of what to do. She takes him to her apartment and he sleeps on the sofa. 

He feels bad for crashing into her life, the life she built, a life that isn’t falling apart but he doesn’t know where else to go. He spends two weeks on her sofa, most nights he doesn’t sleep he just stares at the ceiling and hopes she’ll come back for him, then feels pathetic for hoping she’d come back for him. He wonders if she ever really loved him (so much) because if she did how could she leave. He prays that she isn’t dead on the concrete somewhere far away from him. 

When he goes back to his apartment it feels like someone’s sterilised it, every trace of her, of them, has been wiped away He thinks after two weeks he should be able to breathe again, but the absence of her still feels like an open wound. He goes into work and tries to solve cases but everytime he looks at the space she used to occupy his ribs shrink again. The whole squad knows and he can feel their pity. He caught Charles crying in the bathroom and Gina keeps trying to get him to dance and without her the family he built starts to unravel. The worst part is Holt. When the Captain asks if Jake’s okay he starts to cry all over again, almost worse than the first few times. It hurts. It all hurts and he doesn’t know how to fix it. 

He visits his mother and she tells him it’s going to be okay. He sees her brothers and they ask him how she is and he realises they don’t even know and it all just seems so fucked up. How did he let it get so fucked up? The squad pitches in to make sure he eats and sleeps and continues to live. (Even though it doesn’t feel like living it just feels like drowning but slower.) He isn’t sure what to do, isn’t sure when his life got so unfamiliar. But she turned and she left and Jake Peralta isn’t sure if he’ll ever breathe again.

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't really know how to end this so i hope it's okay. I also might go back to this idea and write it better but idk.


End file.
